


Assimilation

by KivaEmber



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor
Genre: Gen, Gore, Medical Torture, Mental Instability, Post-Despot Ending, why being immortal is actually bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-04-12
Packaged: 2018-01-19 03:00:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1452973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KivaEmber/pseuds/KivaEmber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ninety years Kazuya had been King of Bel, and he could sum up his reign in one word: exhausting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Assimilation

It was like breaking the surface of a lake.

 

Kazuya’s chest seized, lungs spasming as he choked for air, the world swirling into view – chaotic view, a red sky, smoke, blurred faces leaning over him that broke into panicked yelling – the barrel of a rifle swinging at hi-

 

**_BANG_ **

 

He sunk back into the darkness.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Again, Kazuya broke from it with a gasp and a shudder. A tremendous headache thundered behind his eyes, throbbing and pulsing in time with his sluggish heartbeat. There was no red sky meeting his vision now – instead it was blinding white, glaring, artificial, and Kazuya squinted his eyes shut, his loud breathing slowly evening until it was calm and steady once more.

 

 _‘Badum. Badum._ ’ That was his heart. It ached.

 

“I hate dying…” he muttered. His mouth felt like it was full of cotton, painfully dry and foul tasting, and when he licked his lips, he realised blood had caked there, sticky and congealed. What, they shot him, and didn’t even bother cleaning him up? They really weren’t respectful towards dignitaries in this day and age, huh…? Humans got ruder and ruder the more the decades went by.

 

He opened his eyes and looked about him, slowly turning his head left to right. His wrists were pinned to the table on either side of his head, palms facing up, with thick, heavy duty cuffs bolted down onto the uncomfortably hard surface of the… table? Yes, table he was lying on. His gaze shifted past the restraints, and all he saw was white. White walls. Emptiness. Strange, medical machines stashed into corners, looming over him while humming softly. Oh, what a familiar scene.

 

In a sharp movement, Kazuya wrenched his arm upwards. The thick band of metal that had been biting into his wrist snapped like a brittle twig, and he paused when the broken mental clattered loudly onto the floor. The noise echoed, and Kazuya listened. No footsteps, no shouting… they really must’ve gotten arrogant if they didn’t even post guards around him. Just because he had been _dead_ didn’t mean he’d stay like that.

 

He reached over to his other wrist with his now free hand, and tore off the metal restrain there too. Free to sit up, Kazuya did so slowly, feeling a discomforting feeling shifting in his stomach. His hands dropped, pressing and – it felt wet and hot, and he looked down to see-

 

“Oh, for _fuck’s_ sake not another _dissection_!” Kazuya snarled, quickly leaning back to prop himself up on his one elbow, while his other hand frantically shoved back in what little had managed to spill out from his movement. His organs, red and glistening, slipped disgustingly against his fingers, and he was probably pushing things back in the wrong way, but they would sort themselves out later. This was so gross, he could live without having to-

 

A stuttering, whimpering gasp drew Kazuya’s attention in mid-shove, and he looked up to see that, at the end of the otherwise empty operating room, at the door, was a young woman. The first thing he noticed was the red hair, tied up by a pink ribbon – a flash of Yuzu’s tear-stained face flickered across his memory, but it was gone when the woman erupted into a loud, panicked scream, her clipboard clattering to the floor and-

 

The next second heavily armoured gunmen came bursting through the door, but Kazuya was already moving, tearing off the cuffs on his ankles before throwing himself flat onto the floor. Gunshots roared out, hitting the operating table, pinging off the metal surface. Kazuya remained curled up, huddling close to the thick, metal support beam that held up the operating table, gritting his teeth as his hands pressed against his stomach, trying to keep everything _in_.

 

He hated this. He hated laboratories. He _hated_ dissections!

 

“Ngh…” Kazuya planted his hand flat against the floor, ignoring the squelch of blood sticking to it, and took several deep breaths. The roar of bullets, shouting, chaos, always chaos, every time, every day, every year, chaos chaos chaos-

 

“Fuck it,” he muttered, spitting out blood and then-

 

The world warped and sucked, swirling into a black abyss before, with a sickening thud, Kazuya’s back slammed into wet rock and a dark, rumbling sky met his eyes. Rain hit his face, and Kazuya just lied there, arms splayed, fire in his belly, organs probably strewn about in a mess, and closed his eyes.

 

He slipped into the blackness.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The sky was blue when he next opened his eyes.

 

His head was still pounding, and the foul taste in his mouth was even worse than before. Carefully, Kazuya propped himself up, hand pressing against his stomach and feeling nothing but smooth, unmarked skin. It was covered in a thin, crusty layer of _blood_ but… no loose organs. That was good.

 

The area around him was full of trees – birds were twittering cheerfully, the noise of a stream, a gust of cool wind… it was a forest. Kazuya had teleported to a forest. Better than a city, he supposed. A human would take advantage of a dead Demon King, after all, especially one with a bounty as big as his on his head. How much was the World’s Government paying for him now? A trillion yen? Even though he had been caught so many times throughout the decades, he just kept coming back to life and strolling out of their prisons or laboratories. Hah, it must make them so angry to keep paying that bounty out.

 

Kazuya didn’t know how long he sat there, soaking in the peaceful surroundings. Long enough that the sun begun to dip behind the trees, the sky turning pink and purple, the wind turning chilly – with that, Kazuya slowly climbed to his feet and staggered towards the noise of running water. There was a river only just behind a clump of trees, and without any grace, he threw himself into the cold water, feeling it run over him, smothering him, washing away the thick, sticky blood on his body.

 

He drowned in it

 

 

* * *

 

 

and when he woke up on the mossy bank, vomiting up water, it was morning.

 

His lungs and nose burned, but he felt refreshed, and he rolled onto his back, breathing in the smell of the forest, digging his fingernails into the soft dirt under him, the water running over his legs. It was cold, though, and he shivered lightly, finding a twisted sense of pleasure in the human feeling. He was cold, so he shivered. He still had human mannerisms like that. He still got sleepy, he still got cravings for sugar and junk food, he still remembered-

 

The blue sky burned into his eyes, and Kazuya reached his hand up towards it. His fingernails were claws, black and sharp, and his skin was white – no longer the light tan when he had been – well, he had been _Kazuya_. Kazuya Minegishi. A normal, high school student who liked…

 

Who liked…

 

His thoughts faltered, and everything that far back was grey. Who were his parents? He couldn’t remember their faces. Naoya’s – Cain’s, he remembered him, his scent was burned into his memory, his hunger for his eyes, face, heart, still burned in his belly, and he still sought him, he loved and hated him, and when he had killed him, when he had-

 

Kazuya sat up, dispelling those memories, pressing his claws against his throat and inhaling sharply. Atsuro and Yuzu. He thought of them. Their innocent faces – Atsuro’s eyes growing dull when they crushed Metatron, his skin burned and blistered from holy water, and Yuzu’s tear-stained face, her screams of betrayal and despair- no, no, no, those weren’t what he wanted either.

 

But anything before that was grey. Those memories belonged to Kazuya, not to him. Not anymore.

 

The birds were silent now. The forest was quiet. Only the stream sounded out. Kazuya climbed to his feet.

 

“I need clothes,” he said to no one in particular, and he turned away from the stream, the world bending and warping and – he was in the dark storeroom of a clothes store, boxes that smelt faintly of new fabric tickling his nose, and he moved silently, his mind blissfully blank, and stole some clothes.

 

Dark shirt, dark trousers, they didn’t make his red jeans anymore, which was a travesty to fashion. Everyone just dressed in black now.

 

“You’d complain about it, ‘that’s not Harujuku fashion!’ At least I don’t have to sit in the changing rooms watching you get changed into a million outfits anymore!” Kazuya laughed to himself, and his voice echoed back at him, but he could imagine Yuzu – a happy Yuzu, well, pouting, slightly annoyed, but happy, and he rubbed his palms together, smiling down at them. “You look nicer in bright colours, so this would look bad on you, I agree. Eh? Yeah… yeah, I know…”

 

Kazuya’s smile faded and he turned away from the storeroom – again, the world bent and warped, conforming to his Will, and he was stepping into the old ruins of the Hills Building. It had toppled twenty years back, and no living thing had gone near it since. The demons that prowled here were vicious and deadly, and it was deemed Ground Zero by the World’s Government. Only a fool would tread here.

 

Or Kazuya. The demons loved him. He loved them too. The ones with human faces at least, and acted humans, and pretended just for him. He loved them.

 

“Glad I don’t have to pay damages on this thing, I didn’t even want the building in the first place,” Kazuya muttered, kicking a rock. There was no one around, no demon, no human, no nothing – not even an insect. The rock clattered noisily until it came to a stop, and Kazuya turned to see the jutting form of Babel sprouting from the Hills Building’s foundations, its wide eyes gazing out across the horizon, its branches buried deep into the concrete earth. Kazuya could hear it thrumming, his eyes trailing its towering form up to where it vanished into the heavens.

 

“I’m really tired.”

 

Babel didn’t answer him. Kazuya laughed. Hollowly.

 

“Where are you, Cain… Cain, where are you…” he rubbed his palms against his face, breathing short, before he laughed again, “No, Naoya. Naoya is better. You should be alive again now, right? You said you’d… be reborn, but, I can find you. Just… humans who hate me. I didn’t even want this, I don’t want it, I want it to stop…”

 

The Hills Building was quiet. Babel was silent. The red sky above glared down at him, the swirling vortex of the demon world gaping. Kazuya lowered his hands and looked out at the broken skyline, and found himself preferring the green of the forest, with the noise, and the cold river, where he was smothered and could drift into a peaceful death.

 

The silence was broken with a crack, and pain blossomed in Kazuya’s shoulder. He grunted, stumbled, but caught himself, watching blood spurt from his chest – oh, his heart had been pierced – and that was all he thought before his body slumped to the floor, back on concrete, red sky glaring down at him and the blackness dragging him down

 

 

* * *

 

 

until he woke up to see the barrel of a rifle, and Kazuya wished _fire_ and the world was then ablaze. Screams, human screams, howled around him, and Kazuya remained on the floor, reaching upwards, at the demon vortex, and said;

 

“I’m so sick of dying.”

 

He let the fire consume him. He could sleep longer when he was ashes.


End file.
